


stay

by favoriteword



Category: Video Blogging & YouTube RPF
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-11
Updated: 2013-06-11
Packaged: 2017-12-14 16:44:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,058
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/839094
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/favoriteword/pseuds/favoriteword
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This felt most like home to Phil, and most like old times, whatever that was worth.</p>
            </blockquote>





	stay

After _Video Games_ it was the slow, ringing notes like a tolling bell; after _Skyfall_ it was those velvety dark ones that sounded more like they were being pushed over the edge than played; after _Isolated System_ they came fast but full, like the beginning and then middle of a rainstorm.

After every song the piano came, floating down the hall, serious and beautiful and perfect because Dan would only allow himself to play perfectly.

He'd told Phil before that a piano-driven song followed a bell curve like any other, but when it blossomed it was bigger and deeper and shimmering somehow, and he'd gestured wildly because he wasn't saying enough with his words, but Phil understood.

He understood because he heard it too, and the bloom of the original was never lessened when Dan played it over on his little upright, hunched and focused and Phil quiet beside him.

Dan never sang while he played – he considered his voice inferior to his playing and so he left it out. Sometimes, however, he'd ask Phil to sing if he needed the words to make the notes flow better, and the request always made Phil thrill internally with honor and nerves. These were the moments of greatest intimacy between them – Dan would never invite someone into his music like he did Phil, and Phil would never really sing for anyone but Dan.

Phil found that if he didn't try too hard he did alright, his deep voice blending nicely with the somber melodies Dan favored, and when he rested his chin on Dan's shoulder (a fairly regular habit), he felt the vibrations of the keys running up Dan's arm and he knew Dan could feel Phil's voice rumbling down to his fingertips. Even when Phil didn't sing, he would lean against Dan and lose himself in the hypnotic movement of his hands playing a hundred lullabies.

This felt most like home to Phil, and most like old times, whatever that was worth. Dan on the keyboard in their first flat, even back in Phil's old place, had made it feel like a real home – what were formerly a forgettable apartment and a cheap Yamaha were now symbols of what Phil had worked to afford and Dan had worked to learn, and what they had both worked to bring together to create their shared life. He wished his old wish that there was a way to communicate all this without sounding ridiculous; the things he was reminiscing about were over with and it wouldn't do to get all sentimental about them now.

 _Dan_ had a way to communicate it, of course, and for this more than anything Phil envied him. Dan spoke through the music, expressed all his feelings without ever saying anything, which was bloody ingenious; in actuality Dan was a big quivering pile of emotional jelly, but you'd never know it because hey, he was just copying something he'd heard on the radio, just playing notes off a page. Phil figured there was probably some kind of poetic irony in the fact that with this one instrument before him, Dan was simultaneously his most open and his most deceitful.

It didn't bear talking about, though. It was the sort of thing that collapsed under acknowledgement, and they had gotten good at avoiding delicate subjects. They both realized, with something of a pained resignation, that this was probably the nicest of the things they never talked about, and so they let it lie. Phil sometimes wondered if they avoided all those things because they hurt to talk about or because they weren't worth talking about, and though it was in the small-scale, personal calamity kind of way, either one seemed rather tragic.

Which is why it meant so much that they left the second chair beside the piano, always, unless company was coming and the dining table needed to be at full seating capacity. It was _you're next to me in my life_ in real life – a mutual comfort neither of them mentioned but that neither of them had to mention, which was comforting in itself; it represented steadiness and trust and the long, abiding kind of love.

 

~

With the London move came a lot of friends, more friends than either of them could ever remember having, and more being made every week. These people, though, they weren't the marble-mouthed idiots Phil and Dan had grown up with – they were actually intelligent and talented and productive, inspired and inspiring, intimidating not because they might beat you up after school but because their ideas might outshine yours. Collaborating with the popular vloggers was good for views and exposure, but those things were incidental to all the fun they found themselves having.

On the first properly sunny day of spring, they had Carrie round.

"You know, I was fully prepared to slog this whole way in the rain, hair be damned, until a strange light coming through my window woke me up early this morning. I was annoyed for a minute before I realized --"

Dan finished for her. "It was the SUN!"

"It was the sun," she laughed.

"Oh my god, did it burn? We've had the shades down, so it hasn't touched us yet." He poked Phil's soft upper arm. "Phil's skin would probably bubble."

"Dan, that's gross." Phil waved him off, semi-smiling. "No, I like the sun. Carrie's so cheerful, I think she brought it with her. I bet Carrie _is_ the sun, and her hair is the halo." He reached over and spread her curls out from her head, and she giggled.

"It's called a _corona_ , stupid." Dan turned to Carrie. "Does this mean that if we're around you too long we'll get cancer?"

"Dan!" Phil was aghast, but Carrie laughed. "Is there going to be a preponderance of puns about how hot I am? Because I expect no less."

They went on like this for a while, Phil actually fully raising the shades at one point, warming up the room a little, then eventually dozing off while the other two took much-too-long turns at Skyrim.

 

~

He woke to the familiar sound of the piano, this time playing a simple, repetitive melody that somehow suited the sunlight falling in squares on the floor, and which after a moment Phil recognized as that one Rihanna song. He was just wondering whether Carrie was still there when her voice, muffled by walls but still warm and clear, rang out with the first lines.

" _All along, it was a fever_."

Phil was startled, both by the loveliness of her voice alongside Dan's playing, but really that Dan was playing at all. He rose and crept up the stairs, suddenly grateful that Dan had taken the room on the right so that he could lurk in the hallway unnoticed. He stood still with his hands behind his back, pressed to the wall, knowing he was being weird about this but trying to decide how justifiable it was.

" _He said, 'if you dare, come a little closer'_."

Obviously Dan was allowed to play for other people, it was just that he almost never had. It occurred to Phil that Carrie would be sitting in the second chair, unaware of its significance, and suddenly any urge he had to enter Dan's room was gone. If pressed he would say he didn't want to interrupt them, but truthfully he didn't want to look at Dan just then.

" _Not really sure how to feel about it_..."

Phil stared at his mismatched stocking feet as he listened. Every rational thought about being happy for Dan was overwhelmed by hurt and jealousy. Did Dan think he was still asleep and wouldn't hear the music? Was he just trying to impress a girl? Perhaps they were making a video? But as he traced little watermelons and lightning bolts with his eyes, he kept coming back to the underlying suspicion that Dan probably hadn't thought of him at all.

As Carrie drew the out the word stay, pretty and strong, Phil suddenly remembered something. Didn't the second verse of this song feature a man's voice? And just then he felt his heart fall or skip or something as–

" _It's not much of a life you're livin'_..."

What was _happening_ here? Had Phil missed something incredibly important, perhaps napped through the bit where Dan became okay with singing while he played, okay with actually seriously singing something in front of other people that wasn't somehow licensed to the Disney Corporation? For one mad instant Phil wondered if Dan and Carrie were in love – but no. This is why Dan said Phil sometimes came off a bit manic. He needed to calm down, reign in his imagination. He sank to the floor, back still against the wall, and closed his eyes.

" _Makes me feel like I can't live without you, yeah it takes me all the way_."

Phil couldn't help a flicker of pride and a tiny smile as Dan carried the next stay, a little soft but steady. Whatever the context, it was good to hear him sing.

" _Ooh-hoo, the reason I hold on_..."

Singing together, her voice bolstered his, his brightened hers, and his fingers never once slipped. Really, it was beautiful, and Phil, now feeling drained and detached, wondered if this was going to become a regular thing.

As the song wound down, he figured he ought to try to appear as though he hadn't just spent the past five minutes creeping outside Dan's door, and tiptoed downstairs. He considered pretending he had been asleep the whole time, but that seemed a little ridiculous. He wondered if he should just up and leave, pretend they'd run out of milk or something, but this too seemed unreasonable. The other option was to pretend he was engrossed in the computer or television or something, but what kind of person hears their friends performing a gorgeous duet a few rooms away and decides it's time to check tumblr?

In the end, as the last tones of Carrie's voice faded with Dan's final notes, Phil made tea.

 

~

Later, after Carrie had gone and Dan volunteered to clear up the tea things, Phil wandered through the house, eventually finding himself in the office. It was an odd room, small and isolated but with a surprisingly good view, and for some reason the most consistently tidy. He sat quietly on the futon, waiting and not waiting for an explanation.

Dan appeared after a while. "Hi love," he offered.

"Hi," Phil said. "That was... different."

Dan paused. "That was for you."

Phil blinked, and cursed his stupid heart for fluttering. "Meaning what?"

Dan walked over and sat beside him. 'Well, how did you feel about it?"

"I'm not really sure how to feel about it," Phil half-joked.

Dan huffed humorlessly through his nose, and they both cast their eyes down.

"It was beautiful," Phil murmured after a minute.

Dan leaned back and stared at the ceiling. "My heart was pounding. I swear I was off-pitch at least five times. Carrie was amazing, obviously."

"You were pretty amazing," Phil responded evenly, too scared to ask why the song was for him.

Dan sighed frustratedly and ran a hand through his hair. "Phil. Do you ever think we might have gone about things the wrong way? That we're still going about things the wrong way? I mean, even if things aren't the same as they used to be, that doesn't mean they have to be..." He gestured vaguely.

"I really love you, Dan," Phil said abruptly.

Dan turned to look him in the eyes, and that look was like a drink of water after days in the desert, long and deep and full of that feeling you get upon receiving something you really, really needed.

"I didn't let her sit in the chair," Dan said. "I just threw some stuff on it and asked if she was alright standing."

Smiling was the wrong response to that statement, but Phil smiled. "How are you a person?"

Dan laughed because that was the sort of thing Phil would say. He looked shyly down after moment and asked, "What should our duet be?"

Phil's heart clenched with love. He stared deeply into Dan's eyes again and began, " _I can show you the w_ –"

"For fuck's sake," Dan muttered, and kissed him.

~

**Author's Note:**

> hello! this is not only my first phanfic, but the first fic I've ever finished writing. it was supposed to have an angsty ending, it really was, but somehow a pleasant one snuck in?? maybe I'll also write the depressing version, for fairness' sake. anyway, I hope you derived some measure of enjoyment from it.


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